Lost Lands sells 15,000 tickets during 2018 pre-sale

The success of a first-year festival can often be measured by the rate at which tickets to the event sell for the festival’s following iteration.

Excision‘s Lost Lands festival has accordingly emerged as an indisputable crowd favorite after selling out a pre-sale stock of 15,000 tickets to the event’s 2018 edition. Tickets to the Legend Valley-based Ohio production sold out in mere minutes, with more tickets purchased within the first hour of the pre-sale than during the entire first month of 2017 ticket sales. The number is staggering given the festival’s currently unreleased lineup for the 2018 season, and its return date — Lost Lands will not return until September 14-16, 2018.

The overwhelming response to the pre-sale prompted surprise not only on behalf of dedicated Lost Lands fans seeking to attend in 2018, but of Lost Lands’ founder, Excision himself. Excision released a full statement after the pre-sale, expressing his gratitude, and further detailing the presale process.

Many fans were miffed to find that tickets to Lost Lands 2018 sold out faster than 2017 goers had the opportunity to purchase the passes. Excision noted that the festival’s omission of wristband registration for the event’s opening year resulted in Lost Land organizers’ inability to create a Loyalty Pre-sale style sale that would give preference to those present at the festival’s inaugural run.

In order to facilitate the pre-sale — requested by many — Excision and fellow organizers were required to use a “generic code” of “HEADBANGER” to allow access to the sale.

“We knew the code would spread, but we did not think it would spread faster than Mailchimp could send emails to last year’s purchasers,” Excision wrote, stating that the mail automation platform had imparted that it could send out the email containing the code to the email list of last year’s purchasers in ten-minutes. The email, however, did not go out until 40 minutes later, causing loyalty buyers to completely miss the opportunity to purchase a discounted 2018 pass.